kindergarten

kindergarten, educational division, a supplement to elementary school intended to accommodate children between the ages of four and six years. Originating in the early 19th century, the kindergarten was an outgrowth of the ideas and practices of Robert Owen in Great Britain, J.H. Pestalozzi in Switzerland and his pupil Friedrich Froebel in Germany, who coined the term, and Maria Montessori in Italy. It stressed the emotional and spiritual nature of the child, encouraging self-understanding through play activities and greater freedom, rather than the imposition of adult ideas.

In Great Britain the circumstances of the Industrial Revolution tended to encourage the provision of infant schools for young children whose parents and older brothers and sisters were in the factories for long hours. One of the earliest of these schools was founded at New Lanark, Scot., in 1816 by Owen, a cotton-mill industrialist, for the children of his employees. It was based on Owen’s two ideals—pleasant, healthful conditions and a life of interesting activity. Later infant schools in England, unlike Owen’s, emphasized memory drill and moral training while restricting the children’s freedom of action. In 1836, however, the Home and Colonial School Society was founded to train teachers in the methods advanced by Pestalozzi.

(Read Arne Duncan’s Britannica essay on “Education: The Great Equalizer.”)

In 1837 Froebel opened in Blankenburg, Prussia, “a school for the psychological training of little children by means of play.” In applying to it the name Kindergarten, he sought to convey the impression of an environment in which children grew freely like plants in a garden. During the 25 years after Froebel’s death, kindergartens proliferated throughout Europe, North America, Japan, and elsewhere. In the United States the kindergarten generally became accepted as the first unit of elementary school.